


If This Works

by gigi_originally



Series: Given the Chance [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Peter Pan & Related Fandoms, The Black Cauldron (1985)
Genre: F/M, JFC OUAT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 11:12:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1508411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigi_originally/pseuds/gigi_originally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why do you need my help? Surely there is somebody else; someone with power who can help?" </p>
<p>"It's not about power," Bae states uncomfortably. "It's...complicated."</p>
            </blockquote>





	If This Works

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in the works for far too long. For [Yazzy](http://yazerbaijan.tumblr.com/), because she was the driving behind this idea.
> 
> Tumblr drabble prompt **#61 Fairy Tale**.

What it came down to, after everything, was the simple fact that Rumplestiltskin had bound his life to Pan's in order to kill the demon boy and so, to save the imp, the boy had to be saved too.  

It begins in the Enchanted Forest, with some prophecy Wendy never hears with her own ears. It travels to Oz, where there is magic worked and a Beauty half-killed and a failed attempt at saving a captive Beast that leads to an almost disastrous outcome. 

An ex-Lost Boy is sent to find a Savior to accompany him to London. They are chosen to go on the strength of the magic in their veins and the premise that they, out of all, belong to the Land Without Magic where their happy ending hides.  

When the doorbell rings, Wendy smiles brightly and answers, expecting post; maybe one of John's and Michael's friends from work. Instead, her squeal of delight calls the brothers to her side as she throws her arms around their adopted sibling. They greet him equally boisterously. He had promised to return, after all, and it has been more than a year.  

Behind him, they spot the uncomfortable face of Henry's mother and the three, robbed of years upon years of playful sibling teasing, grin widely at Baelfire as they wait for his explanation. 

It is not what they expected at all. The grins drop millimeter by millimeter off their lips until they are left with grim expressions of worry and upset.  

In the end, the brothers do not want their sister to go. Theirs is family thrice-and-more times bitten by magic, they are right to be shy of it. But Emma is persuasive and honest and promises total protection. It is a promise she has delivered on before. It eases their minds just a little, just enough that they can sit down. Baelfire too swears he will not let the same thing happen twice. He is ready for Pan--they all are--and the situation is such that they have the upper hand. 

Rumple is in such a state he can barely rub two straws together. Pan is comatose. 

"But what can I do?" Wendy asks quietly when everything is laid out before them. The Darlings understand the who, what, where and how. Their visitors have only skirted one thing but it is the most important: they have not said  _why_. "Why do you need my help? Surely there is somebody else; someone with power who can help?" 

"It's not about power," Bae states uncomfortably. "It's...complicated."  

He takes a deep breath, shifts a little, shares a cautionary look with Emma and Wendy feels more and more dread building with each passing second. In situations like these--rare moments where the passage of time is a grating crawl along her skin--Wendy misses Never Neverland's temporal stasis. She would never admit it, hardly acknowledged it to herself, but it is there in the back of her mind. 

She misses Neverland. 

And, buried even deeper than that in the very darkest parts of her consciousness, is the knowledge that she misses Peter too. 

"How is it complicated?" John demands, his tone polite but hard and unyielding.  

Bae shifts yet again and shares another, more uncomfortable look with Emma Swan. Then they ask the Darling siblings to accompany them to Wales. There's man they have to see about a pig. 

The pig, it turns out, is magical. Hen Wen takes an immediate liking to Wendy and the old man smiles fondly at the sight of the blonde girl petting the little pig's head. He shakes his head and looks away when Wendy meets his gaze. Then they close the curtains of the quaint cottage and Wendy's world turned on its head. 

# 

The Enchanted Forest is nothing like Never Neverland. Wendy doesn't know what she expected when they jumped through the portal, her hands held tight in Bae's and Emma's, but it was not cold and wet and grey. The Enchanted Forest is the land of fairy tales. Is there not supposed to be sun? It occurs to Wendy that this was not the first time she had been fooled by her imagination. The sting of the thought, even in her own head, is almost too much to bear. She squeezes Bae's hand tighter and follows him down a thickly treed path. 

Emma Swan waits for them at the door to a well-camouflaged cottage built into the underside of a hill. The door opens as they approach to reveal a tired, worn but relieved Belle. Wendy wants to smile at the kind librarian but the knot of nerves and nausea sitting heavy between her breasts prevents her from doing anything but meeting the woman's eyes. Belle, nonetheless, smiles warmly at the young girl and leads her off some distance to the edge of the trees. 

"You've grown," Belle says as she envelopes the girl in a hug.  

They had not been granted the time to know each other for very long after everything that happened in Neverland but Belle had taken the time to sit and talk with Wendy until the Darlings had chosen to leave Storybrooke for London. Their situations had been similar enough for Belle to offer real advice on readjusting to the world. Wendy had leaned heavily on the older woman's guidance until she had left.  

Now, she winds her arms around Belle's frame and muffles her questions in the woman's cloak: "Is it true? Does it have to be us? Does it have to be  _me_?" 

Belle draws back and looks Wendy directly in the eyes. "If there was any other way, we would  _never_  ask." 

Belle's sincerity is unquestionable. More than the knowledge Hen Wen had granted them, it is Belle's honesty that finally convinces Wendy that she is the only one who can help them. Bae and Emma cease their quiet conversation as the two women return. One look at Bae's anxious face and Wendy feels horrible for ever doubting their words. This is Baelfire, her friend and brother, the boy who gave up his chance at happiness to save her family. She can do at least this for his family. 

Wendy has no idea how to feel about it though. How can she be the one they need? How is  _she_ Peter Pan's true love? 

Inside the hill, it is dark but warm. There is a fire blazing in the hearth and candles light up the room in soft tones of gold and softer shadows. At a long wooden table, the man known as Rumplestiltskin sits at supper. He is nothing like Wendy remembers him, his hands shake violently as he uses his cutlery and his face looks utterly distraught. There is a tenseness in him at every move that screams of skittishness and pain. It is a horrible sight and Wendy wonders what happened to him as quickly as she realizes she would rather not know. 

But he is not the one she is there to see; she is here to help him but he is not the one  _she_  can save. 

There is a door beyond the imp that stands cracked slightly open and the sound of shuffling comes from behind it. The Savior stiffens immediately; hand going to her hip for a gun she no longer carries. Baelfire turns to Belle, his question plain on his face. 

"He woke up a few days after you left," she says quietly.  

"Probably right when you got her," adds Rumple's low, hoarse voice, his spoon pointed straight at Wendy.  

Wendy doesn't know what to make of that. It infers too much; allots too much power to things she would rather not admit to. She never thinks that her presence is as much a confession as it is a favor.  

She gets no time to dwell on that, however; the door creaks open wider. 

Peter is taller than she remembers, broader in shoulder, but still youthful and enchanting. She wonders if, even in death, he had started growing like she did away from the island's magic. His eyes are the same when they meet hers. 

"Bird?" His voice is deeper. 

She shifts her weight from one foot to the next and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Her voice is barely audible when she replies.  

"Hello Peter." 

# 

"No." 

No one is surprised by the refusal. Peter Pan, bound and mortal, in Storybrooke for the rest of his life? Peter Pan growing up, growing old, bound forever to Rumplestiltskin? 

"Absolutely not." 

Baelfire growls in frustration as Emma drops her head into her hand and rubs at her brow. Belle sighs heavily beside the silent Wendy, who keeps her eyes on the door behind which Rumple sleeps. He had hobbled away after Peter sat down. The two being in close proximity apparently makes them both sick. Wendy knows far too little about the workings of magic to question its effects.  

"How do you even plan to do it?" Peter asks in a shadow of his former disdainful tone. "Your Queen is off doing who knows what, your Dark One is as good as useless and you've stripped me of all my magic." 

Emma is the one who answers with gritted teeth and barely restrained anger. "There's bigger magic than what you work." 

Peter raises a skeptical eyebrow and looks, just for a moment, like the king he used to be. "Are you going to do it?" 

"She can't," Belle breaks in, voice strong and confident as it always seems to be. Wendy admires the woman's tenacity, her strength in the face of adversity and seemingly insurmountable odds. Her optimism all but shines. No wonder she turned the Dark One on his head. She was a captive who became beloved. 

Inside, Wendy shrinks at the inadvertent comparison. The boy across from her hadn't wanted her at all. She tries to inconspicuously wrap her arms tighter around herself and not let the gnawing doubts about their claims overwhelm her. They believe in her. The very least she could do is try, for Bae and Emma and Belle, despite her own misgivings. 

Her subtle movements do no go entirely unnoticed. Peter catches her eye across the table and slowly his expression becomes a mix of realization and horror. 

He shoves away from the table with sudden brutal force. The stool he was perched on goes clattering away across the floor as he stares at Wendy with a violent mix of emotions in his eyes. He looks from Belle to Bae to Emma with varying degrees of accusation and, oddly, embarrassment visible on his features until finally his gaze rests on Wendy again. Then he is moving, his strides long and stronger than any time since he awoke, driven purely by the adrenaline rushing through his system. His hand wraps around Wendy's arm and he hauls her to her feet. 

"We need to talk," he says to her and drags her toward the door. It doesn't occur to her to struggle until Bae is holding her other arm. She is caught between the two boys who have dictated her life for so long and she wants none of it.  

She shrugs them both off, Peter more harshly than Bae, and stands between them for the first time in ever. In all her hundred and something years of life, this is the first time they have all been together like this. First, she turns to Bae, puts her back to Peter and so misses the dark expression that crosses his face, and puts her hand on her adopted brother's shoulder. 

"Bae, I do need to talk to him," she tells him quietly. "Maybe... Maybe I can help in another way. You brought me here for a reason. Let me help you this time. Please." 

Bae considers quietly for a long moment then nods reluctantly. Over her head, he tells Peter, "Stay in the clearing. Don't go into the trees. If you try to hurt her, I'll kill you." 

Peter smirks at the threat, smug as Wendy remembers him and she wants to smack him across the face as he taunts Bae with a simple, "You  _can't_." 

"I can," Bae replies and it is so cold and final that Peter blinks. Then Peter shakes his head and grins. He slides his hand back around Wendy's arm and says, "I always knew I liked you, Baelfire." 

Wendy digs her heels into the packed dirt of the floor and jerks her arm out of his grasp. She doesn't say anything to him, just marches past him and out into the cold, drizzly afternoon. She walks far from the hut but keeps in the line of sight of one of the windows. Peter doesn't want the people within to hear what he has to say; she doesn't want to be out of their sight. 

"Talk," she says when she turns on her heel to face him. She pulls the hood of her coat up over her hair. The temperature has dropped with the approach of evening. She stuffs her hands into her pockets and waits. 

Peter tilts his head, as ever seemingly unaffected by the weather, and begins, "Those clothes look good on you, Darling." 

Wendy stares at him and waits. She knows better now than to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. She'd spent a century in Neverland showing him exactly what he wanted to see every time he pricked at her with his sharp words. Her time back home has re-steeled her spine. She is no flushing Victorian lady anymore. 

Finally, Peter exhales and takes up a position leaning against a tree. He looks off into the distance, back toward the window where Bae and Emma are blatantly watching them for signs of trouble. He declares, "Whatever they brought you here for won't work." 

"I know." 

That causes him to snap his head up and meet her eyes. She pushes on, past the lump in her throat that this conversation kicks at until she feels like choking, "You can't love. And even if you could..." 

She lets her sentence trail off, eyes focused on the shadows between the trees. She isn't afraid of them. They move, but with the shifting of the leaves. These shadows obey only the sun. 

"You're a stupid girl," Peter spits. Wendy does not flinch at it nor does she turn to look at him. He continues anyway. "You come right into the heart of danger for what? To help your precious Baelfire again?" 

There is an impotent rage in the way he says Bae's name. Wendy retorts hotly, "I love him. I don't expect you to understand." 

Peter scoffs, nails digging into the flesh of his forearms, shoulders tight. "Of course you do. But he's got a new blonde now, Bird. You're here for  _nothing_." 

"And you're an idiot if you think that's how I love him. Bae's my friend, my  _brother_. You had that once too, remember?" Wendy knows she has found her weapon when hurt too raw flashes in Peter's eyes. "You think you understand how love works, Peter, but you don't. You keep telling yourself that you do and that is your greatest pretend." 

"I don't need love. I don't need you." 

"I'm not here for you," Wendy says, her temper finally getting the best of her and drawing out the impetuous girl from Neverland. "I'm here to help someone I love but it isn't you." 

"Please," Peter's voice is hard and bitter and spiteful, "tell me more. All I need is more of your  _stories_." 

"You used to like my stories." 

"I used to like you." 

They fall silent at that. He did not mean to say that and she did not want to hear it. Wendy had closed her heart to him ages upon ages ago. He is not allowed to come at her walls with a battering ram. 

He was supposed to be  _dead_. 

"I hate you," she says, voice full of poison. "I hate you completely. You're a horrid, horrid, horrid boy! I never should have come here. I don't know what they were thinking." 

She starts away from him faster than he realizes, muttering under her breath about lying pigs. He takes a moment to catch up to her but he whirls her around, the force of his pull landing her against his chest. 

"You don't mean that," he whispers roughly in her ear. "You wouldn't be here if you did. You came here for me." 

"I came here for  _me_ ," she corrects. "I wasted time I wasn't ever supposed to have hoping, waiting, wanting and all I ever got from you was--" 

He leans down abruptly and covers her mouth with his. She struggles against him at first because, for all their history, they have never kissed.  

"Bird," he gasps against her lips, "kiss me back." 

He slides his hands beneath her hood, cups his hands under her ears, cradles her skull in his palms and presses his mouth firmly against hers. She almost doesn't obey but this is what they brought her here for: she is Peter Pan's true love and only true love's kiss can save him. Belle has already done her part with Rumple and Emma will cast the final spell if this works.  

_If this works_. 

If this works, she will save Peter and Rumple and the entire Enchanted Forest from the Wicked Witch of Oz. If this works, she will finally repay her debt to Bae and give him back the family he had given up for the sake of her brothers.  

But, if this works, she will have given away her greatest secret; that part of her that she denies even to herself. If this works, she will have told the world she still loves this boy whose lips and tongue work to pry her open, his kiss as cruel as she ever expected. 

And, if this works (ifthisworks _ifthisworks_ ifthis ** _works_** ), Wendy does not know how to be the girl Peter Pan learned to love. 

Peter's tongue sweeps inside her mouth and she moans, her hands scrambling for purchase on his shoulders as he kisses her. She can feel warmth--more warmth than is normal even with their bodies pressed so close together--and it pulses out from their hearts. Suddenly, it bursts like a wave over them and Peter breaks away from her, panting. He collapses to his knees and she falls beside him, barely catching him as his frame tips and falls sideways. 

She can hear the door of the cottage swinging open, can hear the pounding of footsteps as those inside rush toward them but Peter keeps her attention, stingy as always. He curls his fingers around hers and rests their hands above his steadily beating heart. 

"Don't say I never gave you anything, Bird." 

# 

In the end, it works. 

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably be part of a series...in the distant future.


End file.
